A LONELY NIGHT
I had a pipe of my own in my pocket; I fetched a small block of the
black tobacco that was in the pantry, and, with some trouble, for it was
as hard and dry as glass, chipped off a bowlful and fell a-puffing with
all the satisfaction of a hardened lover of tobacco who has long been
denied his favourite relish. The punch diffused a pleasing glow through
my frame, the tobacco was lulling, the heat of the fire very soothing,
the hearty meal I had eaten had also marvellously invigorated me, so
that I found my mind in a posture to justly and rationally consider my
condition, and to reason out such probabilities as seemed to be attached
to it.
First of all I reflected that by the usual operation of natural laws
this vast seat of "thrilling and thick-ribbed ice" in which the schooner
lay bound was steadily travelling to the northward, where in due course
it would dissolve, though that would not happen yet. But as it advanced
so would it carry me nearer to the pathways of ships using these seas,
and any day might disclose a sail near enough to observe such signals of
smoke or flag as I might best contrive. But supposing no opportunity of
this kind to offer, then I ought to be able to find in the vessel
materials fit for the construction of a boat, if, indeed, I met not with
a pinnace of her own stowed under the main-hatch, for there was
certainly no boat on deck. Nay, my meditations even carried me further:
this was the winter season of the southern hemisphere, but presently the
sun would be coming my way, whilst the ice, on the other hand, floated
towards him; if by the wreck and dissolution of the island the schooner
was not crushed, she must be released, in which case, providing she was
tight--and my brief inspection of her bottom showed nothing wrong with
her that was visible through the shroud of snow--I should have a stout
ship under me in which I would be able to lie hove to, or even make
shift to sail her if the breeze came from the south, and thus take my
chance of being sighted and discovered.
Much, I had almost said everything, depended on the quantity of
provisions I should find in here and particularly on the stock of coal,
for I feared I must perish if I had not a fire. But there was the hold
to be explored yet; the navigation of these waters must have been
anticipated by the men of the schooner, who were sure to make handsome
provision for the cold--and the surer if, as I fancied, they were
Spaniards. Certainly they might have exhausted their stock of coal, but
I could not persuade myself of this, since the heap in the corner of the
cook-room somehow or other was suggestive of a store behind.
I knew not yet whether more of the crew lay in the forecastle, but so
far I had encountered four men only. If these were all, then I had a
right to believe, grounding my fancy on the absence of boats, that most
of the company had quitted the ship, and this they would have done
early--a supposition that promised me a fair discovery of stores. Herein
lay my hope; if I could prolong my life for three or four months, then,
if the ice was not all gone, it would have advanced far north, serving
me as a ship and putting me in the way of delivering myself, either by
the sight of a sail, or by the schooner floating free, or by my
construction of a boat.
Thus I sat musing, as I venture to think, in a clearheaded way. Yet all
the same I could not glance around without feeling as if I was
bewitched. The red shining of the furnace ruddily gilded the
cook-house; through the after-sliding door went the passage to the cabin
in blackness; the storming of the wind was subdued into a strange
moaning and complaining; often through the body of the ship came the
thrill of a sudden explosion; and haunting all was the sense of the dead
men just without, the frozen desolation of the island, the mighty world
of waters in which it lay. No! you can think of no isolation comparable
to this; and I tremble as I review it, for under the thought of the
enormous loneliness of that time my spirit must ever sink and break
down.
It was melancholy to be without time, so I pulled out the gold watch I
had taken from the man on the rocks and wound it up, and guessing at the
hour, set the hands at half-past four. The watch ticked bravely. It was
indeed a noble piece of mechanism, very costly and glorious with its
jewels, and more than a hint as to the character of this schooner; and
had there been nothing else to judge by I should still have sworn to her
by this watch.
My pipe being emptied, I threw some more coals into the furnace, and
putting a candle in the lanthorn went aft to take another view of the
little cabins, in one of which I resolved to sleep, for though the
cook-room would have served me best whilst the fire burned, I reckoned
upon it making a colder habitation when the furnace was black than those
small compartments in the stern. The cold on deck gushed down so
bitingly through the open companion-hatch that I was fain to close it.
I mounted the steps, and with much ado shipped the cover and shut the
door, by which of course the great cabin, as I call the room in which
the two men were, was plunged in darkness; but the cold was not
tolerable, and the parcels of candles in the larder rendered me
indifferent to the gloom.
On entering the passage in which were the doors of the berths, I noticed
an object that had before escaped my observation--I mean a small
trap-hatch, no bigger than a manhole, with a ring for lifting it, midway
down the lane. I suspected this to be the entrance to the lazarette, and
putting both hands to the ring pulled the hatch up. I sniffed
cautiously, fearing foul air, and then sinking the lanthorn by the
length of my arm I peered down, and observed the outlines of casks,
bales, cases of white wood, chests, and so forth. I dropped through the
hole on to a cask, which left me my head and shoulders above the deck,
and then with the utmost caution stooped and threw the lanthorn light
around me. But the casks were not powder-barrels, which perhaps a little
reflection might have led me to suspect, since it was not to be supposed
that any man would stow his powder in the lazarette.
As I was in the way of settling my misgivings touching the stock of food
in the schooner, I resolved to push through with this business at once,
and fetching the chopper went to work upon these barrels and chests; and
very briefly I will tell you what I found. First, I dealt with a tierce
that proved full of salt beef. There was a whole row of these tierces,
and one sufficed to express the nature of the rest; there were upwards
of thirty barrels of pork; one canvas bale I ripped open was full of
hams, and of these bales I counted half a score. The white cases held
biscuit. There were several sacks of pease, a number of barrels of
flour, cases of candles, cheeses, a quantity of tobacco, not to mention
a variety of jars of several shapes, some of which I afterwards found to
contain marmalade and succadoes of different kinds. On knocking the head
off one cask I found it held a frozen body, that by the light of the
lanthorn looked as black as ink; I chipped off a bit, sucked it, and
found it wine.
I was so transported by the sight of this wonderful plenty that I fell
upon my knees in an outburst of gratitude and gave hearty thanks to God
for His mercy. There was no further need for me to dismally wonder
whether I was to starve or no; supposing the provisions sweet, here was
food enough to last me three or four years. I was so overjoyed and
withal curious that I forgot all about the time, and flourishing the
chopper made the round of the lazarette, sampling its freight by
individual instances, so that by the time I was tired I had enlarged the
list I have given, by discoveries of brandy, beer, oatmeal, oil, lemons,
tongues, vinegar, rum, and eight or ten other matters, all stowed very
bunglingly, and in so many different kinds of casks, cases, jars, and
other vessels as disposed me to believe that several piratical
rummagings must have gone to the creation of this handsome and
plentiful stock of good things.
Well, thought I, even if there be no more coal in the ship than what
lies in the cook-house, enough fuel is here in the shape of casks,
boxes, and the like to thaw me provisions for six months, besides what I
may come across in the hold, along with the hammocks, bedding, boxes,
and so forth in the forecastle, all which would be good to feed my fire
with. This was a most comforting reflection, and I recollect springing
out through the lazarette hatch with as spirited a caper as ever I had
cut at any time in my life.
I replaced the hatch-cover, and having resolved upon the aftmost of the
four cabins as my bedroom, entered it to see what kind of accommodation
it would yield me. I hung up the lanthorn and looked into the cot, that
was slung athwartships, and spied a couple of rugs, or blankets, which I
pulled out, having no fancy to lie under them. The deck was like an old
clothes' shop, or the wardrobe of a travelling troop of actors. From the
confusion in this and the ajoining cabins, I concluded that there had
been a rush at the last, a wild overhauling and flinging about of
clothes for articles of more value hidden amongst them. But just as
likely as not the disorder merely indicated the slovenly indifference of
plunderers to the fruits of a pillage that had overstocked them.
The first garment I picked up was a cloak of a sort of silk material,
richly furred and lined; all the buttons but one had been cut off, and
that which remained was silver. I spread it in the cot, as it was a
soft thing to lie upon. Then I picked up a coat of the fashion you will
see in Hogarth's engravings; the coat collar a broad fold, and the cuffs
to the elbow. This was as good as a rug, and I put it into the cot with
the other. I inspected others of the articles on the deck, and among
them recollect a gold-laced waistcoat of green velvet, two or three
pairs of high-heeled shoes, a woman's yellow sacque, several frizzled
wigs, silk stockings, pumps--in fine the contents of the trunks of some
dandy passengers, long since gathered to their forefathers no doubt,
even if the gentlemen of this schooner had not then and there walked
them overboard or split their windpipes. But, to be honest, I cannot
remember a third of what lay tumbled upon the deck or hung against the
bulkhead. So far as my knowledge of costume went, every article pointed
to the date which I had fixed upon for this vessel.
I swept the huddle of things with my foot into a corner, and lifting the
lids of the boxes saw more clothes, some books, a collection of
small-arms, a couple of quadrants, and sundry rolls of paper which
proved to be charts of the islands of the Antilles and the western South
American coast, very ill-digested. There were no papers of any kind to
determine the vessel's character, nor journal to acquaint me with her
story.
I was tired in my limbs rather than sleepy, and went to the cook-room to
warm myself at the fire and get me some supper, meaning to sit there
till the fire died out and then go to rest; but when I put my knife to
the ham I found it as hard frozen as when I had first met with it; so
with the cheese; and this though there had been a fire burning for
hours! I put the things into the oven to thaw as before, and sitting
down fell very pensive over this severity of cold, which had power to
freeze within a yard or two of the furnace. To be sure the fire by my
absence had shrunk, and the sliding door being open admitted the cold of
the cabin; but the consideration was, how was I to resist the killing
enfoldment of this atmosphere? I had slept in the boat, it is true, and
was none the worse; and now I was under shelter, with the heat of a
plentiful bellyful of meat and liquor to warm me; but if wine and ham
and cheese froze in an air in which a fire had been burning, why not I
in my sleep, when there was no fire, and life beat weakly, as it does in
slumber? Those figures in the cabin were dismal warnings and assurances;
they had been men perhaps stouter and heartier in their day than ever I
was, but they had been frozen into stony images nevertheless, under
cover too, with the materials to make a fire, and as much strong waters
in their lazarette as would serve their schooner to float in.
Well, thought I, after a spell of melancholy thinking, if I _am_ to
perish of cold, there's an end; it is preordained, and it is as easy as
drowning, anyhow, and better than hanging; and with that I pulled out
the ham and found it soft enough to cut, finding philosophy (which, as
the French cynic says, triumphs over past and future ills) not so hard
because somehow I did not myself then particularly feel the cold--I
mean, I was not certainly suffering here from that pain of frost which I
had felt in the open boat.
Having heartily supped, I brewed a pint of punch, and, charging my pipe,
sat smoking with my feet against the furnace. It was after eight o'clock
by the watch I was wearing. I knew by the humming noise that it was
blowing a gale of wind outside, and from time to time the decks rattled
to a heavy discharge of hail. All sounds were naturally much subdued to
my ear by the ship lying in a hollow, and I being in her with the
hatches closed; but this very faintness of uproar formed of itself a
quality of mystery very pat to the ghastliness of my surroundings. It
was like the notes of an elfin storm of necromantic imagination; it was
hollow, weak, and terrifying; and it and the thunder of the seas
commingling, together with the rumbling blasts and shocks of splitting
ice, disjointed as by an earthquake, loaded the inward silence with
unearthly tones, which my lonely and quickened imagination readily
furnished with syllables. The lanthorn diffused but a small light, and
the flickering of the fire made a movement of shadows about me. I was
separated from the great cabin where the figures were by the little
arms-room only, and the passage to it ran there in blackness.
It strangely and importunately entered my head to conceive, that though
those men were frozen and stirless they were not dead as corpses are,
but as a stream whose current, checked by ice, will flow when the ice
is melted. Might not life in them be suspended by the cold, not ended?
There is vitality in the seed though it lies a dead thing in the hand.
Those men are corpses to my eye; but said I to myself, they may have the
principles of life in them, which heat might call into being.
Putrefaction is a natural law, but it is balked by frost, and just as
decay is hindered by cold, might not the property of life be left
unaffected in a body, though it should be numbed in a marble form for
fifty years?
This was a terrible fancy to possess a man situated as I was, and it so
worked in me that again and again I caught myself looking first forward,
then aft, as though, Heaven help me! my secret instincts foreboded that
at any moment I should behold some form from the forecastle, or one of
those figures in the cabin, stalking in, and coming to my side and
silently seating himself. I pshaw'd and pish'd, and querulously asked of
myself what manner of English sailor was I to suffer such womanly
terrors to visit me; but it would not do; I could not smoke; a coldness
of the heart fell upon me, and set me trembling above any sort of
shivers which the frost of the air had chased through me; and presently
a hollow creak sounding out of the hold, caused by some movement of the
bed of ice on which the vessel lay, I was seized with a panic terror and
sprang to my feet, and, lanthorn in hand, made for the companion-ladder,
with a prayer in me for the sight of a star!
I durst not look at the figures, but, setting the light down at the
foot of the ladder, squeezed through the companion-door on to the deck.
My fear was a fever in its way, and I did not feel the cold. There was
no star to be seen, but the whiteness of the ice was flung out in a wild
strange glare by the blackness of the sky, and made a light of its own.
It was the most savage and terrible picture of solitude the invention of
man could reach to, yet I blessed it for the relief it gave to my
ghost-enkindled imagination. No squall was then passing; the rocks rose
up on either hand in a ghastly glimmer to the ebony of the heavens; the
gale swept overhead in a wild, mad blending of whistlings, roarings, and
cryings in many keys, falling on a sudden into a doleful wailing, then
rising in a breath to the full fury of its concert; the sea thundered
like the cannonading of an electric storm, and you would have said that
the rending and crackling noises of the ice were responses to the
crashing blows of the balls of shadow-hidden ordnance. But the scene,
the uproar, the voices of the wind were real--a better cordial to my
spirits than a gallon of the mellowest vintage below; and presently,
when the cold was beginning to pierce me, my courage was so much the
better for this excursion into the hoarse and black and gleaming
realities of the night, that my heart beat at its usual measure as I
passed through the hatch and went again to the cook-room.
I was, however, sure that if I sat here long, listening and thinking,
fear would return. A small fire still burned; I put a saucepan on it,
and popped in a piece of the fresh-water ice, but on handling the
brandy I found it hard set. The heat of the oven was not sufficiently
great to thaw me a dram; so to save further trouble in this way I took
the chopper and at one blow split open the jar, and then there lay
before me the solid body of the brandy, from which I chipped off as much
as I needed, and thus procured a hot and animating draught.
Raking out the fire, I picked up the lanthorn and was about to go, then
halted, considering whether I should not stow the frozen provisions
away. It was a natural thought, seeing how precious food was to me. But,
alas! it mattered not where they lay; they were as secure here as if
they were snugly hidden in the bottom of the hold. It was the white
realm of death; if ever a rat had crawled in this ship, it was, in its
hiding-place, as stiff and idle as the frozen vessel. So I let the lump
of brandy, the ice, ham, and so forth, rest where they were, and went to
the cabin I had chosen, involuntarily peeping at the figures as I
passed, and hurrying the faster because of the grim and terrifying
liveliness put into the man who sat starting from the table by the swing
of the lanthorn in my hand.
I shut the door and hung the lanthorn near the cot, having the flint and
box in my pocket. There was indeed an abundance of candles in the
vessel; nevertheless, it was my business to husband them with the utmost
niggardliness. How long I was to be imprisoned here, if indeed I was
ever to be delivered, Providence alone knew; and to run short of
candles would add to the terrors of my existence, by forcing me either
to open the hatches and ports for light, and so filling the ship with
the deadly air outside, or living in darkness. There were a cloak and a
coat in the cot, but they would not suffice. The fine cloak I had taken
from the man on the rocks was on deck, and till now I had forgotten it;
there was, however, plenty of apparel in the corner to serve as wraps,
and having chosen enough to smother me I vaulted into the cot, and so
covered myself that the clothes were above the level of the sides of the
cot.
I left the lanthorn burning whilst I made sure my bed was all right, and
lay musing, feeling extremely melancholy; the hardest part was the
thought of those two men watching in the cabin. The most fantastic
alarms possessed me. Suppose their ghosts came to the ship at midnight,
and, entering their bodies, quickened them into walking? Suppose they
were in the condition of cataleptics, sensible of what passed around
them, but paralyzed to the motionlessness and seeming insensibility of
death? Then the very garments under which I lay were of a proper kind to
keep a man in my situation quaking. My imagination went to work to tell
me to whom they had belonged, the bloody ends their owners had met at
the hands of the miscreants who despoiled them. I caught myself
listening--and there was enough to hear, too, what with the subdued
roaring of the wind, the splintering of ice, the occasional
creaking--not unlike a heavy booted tread--of the fabric of the
schooner--to the blasts of the gale against her masts, or to a movement
in the bed on which she reposed.
But plain sense came to my rescue at last. I resolved to have no more of
these night fears, so, blowing out the candle, I put my head on the coat
that formed my pillow, resolutely kept my eyes shut, and after awhile
fell asleep.